Panic With Large Network Copy

[Scott Willson]

On May 29, 2007, at 4:26 PM, Kris Kennaway wrote:

> On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 03:36:49PM -0700, Scott Willson wrote:
>> I am seeing hard (often no core dump) crashes on a new AMD64 box
>> running 6.2 RELEASE. When I try to rsync 10+ GB of backup files to
>> the new box, I can reliably crash it after about 20 minutes; often
>> quicker if I do something else intensive at the same time, like
>> compile MySQL. Here are the box specs:
>> ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard
>> AMD A64 3800+ 2.4G CPU
>> ...

>> Most times, I don't even get a core dump. Here's one I did get:
>> panic: double fault
>> ...

>> #9  0xffffffff804371f0 in m_freem (mb=0x0) at uma.h:303
>> #10 0xffffffff80634125 in nve_ospackettx (ctx=0xffffff00798aac00,
>> id=0xffffffffb19ea6d0, success=0) at /usr/src/sys/dev/nve/if_nve.c: 
>> 1551
>
> This looks like a nve driver bug to me.  You may wish to try the  
> nfe driver.
>
> Kris

OK, my box is running nicely now. The nfe driver was indeed a good  
idea, thanks! Here are the details if anyone else has similar problems.

10baseT hub + nve = kernal panics under high load
This is the default FreeBSD 6.2 RELEASE configuration.

10baseT hub + nfe + e100phy patch = errors under high load (tx v2  
error 0x6204<UNDERFLOW>, watchdog timeout)
http://www.se.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~shigeaki/software/freebsd-nfe.html
This is a replacement driver + recommended path for my hardware. No  
panics, but many errors.

10baseT hub + nfe with no patches = errors under high load (tx v2  
error 0x6204<UNDERFLOW>, watchdog timeout)

10/100/1000baseT switch + nfe + e100phy patch = errors under high  
load (tx v2 error 0x6204<UNDERFLOW>, watchdog timeout)

10/100/1000baseT switch + nfe = No errors!
This is a new switch and the nfe driver with no patch. In dmesg, I  
see 'ukphy0' when I boot.

So, as you may have surmised, my motherboard + an old 10baseT hub  
doesn't work right with any driver. I replaced my very old hub with a  
new switch, and I am now running the nfe driver with ukphy0. This  
combination works great.

Scott